Unas Aventuras Argentinas: June 2011

I am quite the lucky girl. Lucas just graduated from Colby (congratulations!) and he came down to visit me. We had a wonderful time together, especially after not having seen each other except on skype for more than 3 months. We had some fun in the city, did the tourist thing, ate lots of steak, etc.

But what I really want to talk about is our very adventure filled trip to Puerto Madryn and the Peninsula Valdés of Patagonia!

Let's back up. Our flight leaves from the airport at 8 in the morning. The night before, we have dinner with my host family until midnight-ish, then go to a club. Obviously Lucas has to experience the nightlife in Buenos Aires, and meet my friends. We succeed in doing both. Back to the hostel at 4, wake up at 6. Every time that I have been in the little airport in Buenos Aires, Aeroparque Jorge Newberry, my plane is always delayed. Just the case this time too. We sleep in the chairs waiting for our flight to be called. We sleep on the airplane. We sleep, or at least I do, on the bus ride from Trelew to our destination of Puerto Madryn. Eyes wide open, we check into the hostel and go scout out the town and get some food for lunch. It's a cute place. There's a little square (obviously called Plaza de Mayo because that's what every square in Argentina is named), and you can see the bay from blocks away. After lunch I resolve to go running, but instead I lay down, and 5 hours later I wake up. Oh well! We head out for dinner, and went to the cutest place. Obviously since we were by the water we wanted fish, and so we end up in a restaurant inside a boat. It was on land, but still, super cool. And the food was quite good. We split a quarter kilo of ice cream and called it a day, getting ready for our big excursion to the peninsula the next day.

Peninsula Valdes is a barely inhabited, UNESCO world heritage site full of wildlife and open land. Even on the isthmus on the way there we found animals. And not just any animals--whales! So at this point, the sun is rising, it's 9 in the morning and Lucas' trip is complete because we've already had a cetacean sighting. We're standing on a beach and we see whales breaching and playing in the water 20 meters from us. It was beautiful and so incredible. There were also penguins floating in the water but I didn't manage to capture any pictures of those little guys.

Once we were finally on the peninsula, things were equally as cool. We spent most of the day driving around, getting from look out to look out, but that was okay. Our driver was fun the the two other people on the trip were very nice, even if they only spoke Spanish. On our next stop we saw elephant seals. They were just lounging on the shore and were also so cute, especially when they sneezed! Also the water was incredible blue and vibrant. It was just a beautiful place to be.

During the rest of the day we saw wild horses and sheep, ñandus (like the south american ostrich), maras (patagonian hares), armadillos and guanacos (kind of like a llama). I tried to get pictures of as many as possible.

After getting back to the mainland I went for a run, a snagged a few nighttime pictures of Puerto Madryn all lit up. By day it reminds me a lot of a beach town, somewhere in Cape Cod or Florida, but you wouldn't be able to tell once it gets dark, there were so many lights!

At this point you're probably thinking, okay they've had a nice trip and they got back to Buenos Aires and Lucas left and Rachel was sad. WRONG. We checked with the hostel that night about a bus back to the airport and found out our flight had been cancelled because of the volcano eruption in Chile. We'd seen the ash that day but it was just a dusting so we didn't think much of it. At least because our plane was cancelled we were able to sleep in. The next morning we went about buying bus tickets back to Bs As because the ash was everywhere and all airports were shut down. This is why Argentine-Chilean relations are not that good. Just kidding. Kind of. So we get on a bus, which is also late, and sit on it for 21 hours. We bring our own food and we each finish a book, and sleep. It isn't horrible. But a 21 hour bus ride at best, is slightly better than horrible.

We arrive in Buenos Aires 2 hours later than expected, run, shower, and eat a lot more steak. Lucas left the next day. I was so happy to have him come visit me, and grateful for a good excuse to try new restaurants and boost my iron! Now I'm finishing up classes and figuring out when I'm going home. Definitely in less than 4 weeks. Yay! I can't wait to go home to see my family and friends, to run, to be in warm weather, and to eat all of the foods i've been missing: bagels, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, brownies, cinnamon buns, pie, good ice cream, shrimp, good salads, cheeseburgers, cheese, breakfast sandwiches, my mom's cooking and much more.

Full of food but wanting more,
Rachel

P.S. The ash cloud from the volcano got all the way to Buenos Aires and flights are just now starting up again. It also got to Australia. We were lucky to be ble to get out when we did!

About a month ago, as I mentioned in one of my last posts, I travelled with half of my program to northwestern Argentina, known as NOA (nor-oeste argentina) to the province of Jujuy. It was officially a seminar on ancient andean life, but mostly just a really good excuse to not do homework and hang out with friends. We saw lots of mountains, cacti, llamas, and textiles, ate llama and coca leaves and tea, tasted salt from a salt flat, felt the effects of 4000 meters above sea level (and the clouds!), and bought lots of tourist-y goods at every market we could find. Here are some pictures:

Our cabins at the hotel, right underneath the mountains